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Arnold Frenken never liked the monotony of administrative work, but he still was good at it despite his best attempts. Though doing anything in the glass-walled front section of his personal Arcion-class air cruiser, converted from an abandoned Federation Navy airship, was always enchanting.
He walked to his desk, adjusting the nameplate, a triangle of oak coated on one side with engraved steel.
Minister of the Foreign Office of Cascadia. A fancy title for the job of both a diplomat and a mercenary overseer.
“Certainly an upgrade from my previous work…” The man mumbled to himself.
The one hundred fifty five meters of the Shepard, clad in the whites and blues of the Cascadian diamond, shone in the afternoon sun, the craft flying westward. And here, he could stand in the semicircle shaped room, admiring the land that unfolded beneath that stretched as far as the eye can see.
Like standing on a magic carpet from all the tales I heard as a kid, he thought. And the views!
The former mercenary liked standing in that room as the airship sailed canyons of clouds, blindingly white in the day or dark and streaked by the blue flash of lightning. Or while a storm whipped rain and snow against the panes, or while the craft threaded through the great valleys and mountains created by the Calamity which shaped his world so long ago, and continues to shape it now. Those rifts reduced the Shepard and him to an insignificant speck in the air, as profound as the stars on the frozen infinity that was Northern Periphery, the first place he could remember calling a home.
He turned again and walked to the the edge of the semicircle of outward-slanting, ten-foot windows that folded around the large U-shaped room with his secretary, a Miss Eleanora Reen, just transferred to the service of the Foreign Office and highly recommended, caught up with the series of memos he was dictating to her throughout the day.
What a sight… It's always great to see this vast nation that I helped build. Like a map, but alive, so alive.
They were on approach to Presidia now, on a brilliant fall afternoon. From twelve hundred feet he could see the skyscrapers rocketing up from the ground and the stark red beams of the bridges that made the main arterial of the capital. He followed its winding path to the harbour… and the Cascadian Navy squadron that was ostensibly why he was back in Cascadia.
Ah… good to see her again… he thought.
The four battleships and two aircraft carriers and their accompanying cruisers, destroyers, LCSs, and support ships sat below him in the docks of the capital, all bound to depart for the patrols across the Golden Ocean and the frontline of the uneasy peace between the Federation and the new Cascadian Commonwealth.
The highlight was, of course, the Eminent Domain, so graciously coined by her crew early into the Cascadian Conflict, captained by his old friend, the-now Admiral Woodward. She was recently just raised from the sea floor, and had just come back from her shakedown cruise. Thousands of tons, twelve 18-inch guns in four massive turrets, with the speed of the fastest destroyers out there.
The spear tip of Cascadia… all under the control of such a madman as him… he laughed to himself. Oh how I wish I could be down there to see him.
And then he saw the Polaris, the submarine docked right next to the battleship.
In the oh-so clean naming conventions of the military, she was an ‘underwater bombardment platform’…
He scowled at their sight, hating the necessity of her and her sisters. Larger than simple attack submarines, they were basically defenceless. The real weapons were in the silos in the middle of the sub. The missiles.
With only high explosive, the massive missiles could wreck a city or a fleet, like a sledgehammer coming down on an ant. With cordium…
Calamity.
Cordium, the thing that keeps Cascadia alive, and yet is the devil’s instrument. Without it, we would have kicked the Federation from Cascadia without all this… With it, the world we have now. Stalemate.
He clenched his fist, looking down at those vessels. Yet the world went on like it always did, and it was up to men like him to keep it that way.
He sat back down and turned towards Miss Reen.
”Miss Reen, please start. To President Griffiths: Mr. President, I urge you to authorize funding for the refitting of our current fleet of airships. The whole point of our airship fleet was to maintain the mobility of aircraft while having firepower comparable to ships, so dismantling them or selling them off to civilians just waiting for a new design that still more than a decade away from being laid down is stupid when the situation has never been worse, goddamnit! I can only do so much through our agents and proxies to prevent another war that’ll surely cause another fucking Calamity!”
Reen blinked at shock from that, and Frenken took pity on the woman. The world has surely seen enough to never want something like that again… but you can’t risk nations on a hunch.
“Make the last part more… diplomatic, but keep it unmistakable. He must know what is at risk.”
Miss Reen typed up the report on her laptop as the minister stood back up and walked to the window.
“Have we received anything else?” Frenken asked.
“Nothing aside from the standard things, sir.” The secretary answered. “A couple reports from some of our assets on the Northern Periphery and the UKA. Nothing major. Do you need anything else, sir?”
“That will be all, Miss Reen. I’ll review them later, and I can sign off on the memos in the next couple days. Thank you.”
The secretary silently nodded and left her own desk by the doorway of the room, and walked out, closing the door softly behind her. A knock followed.
”Enter,” he said.
A man walked in, an unassuming and slender man in his early thirties, with close-cropped brown hair, wide-spaced eyes above a thin mouth. He wore the formal dress of the Cascadian Foreign Legion, a navy blue, unadorned with medals or decorations, aside from the art of a simple butterfly on the left side of his chest.
He saluted. “Minister Frenken.”
Frenken turned around, a grin on his worn face. Years of being a soldier for hire and now managing a part of the Cascadian military has aged him past his fifty one years, but he still managed to smile.
”At ease, Hitman 1.”
The younger man relaxed. “Good to see you again, Boss.” He laughed, and the two men walked to each other and wrapped each other in a hug.
”You’re looking great today Monarch, what’s the occasion?” Arnold said, holding the other at arm’s length.
”Well… you coming to visit, of course.” The pilot replied. “Can’t miss the ‘Minister of the Foreign Office’ coming to visit our little slice of Cascadia.”
”Oh shut up, Monarch…” Frenken pulls back and walks back to his desk. “You know I’m just here from the fleet inspection, since a good chunk of our new navy are foreign mercs under my watch.”
”You can come visit me and Prez, you know. When you have the time.” The pilot sat across from the minister. “Diplomat and Comic is staying over with us right now. Galaxy too.”
”It would be nice…” Frenken thought. “Sometimes, I miss the simplicity of our old life.”
”Deal is a Deal, Boss. We got what we wanted, and they got a country.” Monarch replied. “And plus, me and her are happy. That's all I can ask for.”
“True, true…” The conversation is interrupted by a ring on the intercom.
“All aboard, prepare for arrival. All aboard, prepare for arrival.” The automated voice repeated. “Destination: Port of Presidia.”
“Well… I’ll see you around Boss. You know where to find us.” Monarch stands and walks out the door into the main quarters of the airship.
It’ll be nice to see the others one more time.